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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551723">A wounded deer leaps highest</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback'>anactoriatalksback</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Conflicted Boners, Face Slapping, Francis Crozier submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known, James Fitzjames's Big Thirst TM for Francis Crozier, M/M, Mortified but powerful orgasms, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rimming, Under-negotiated Kink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:22:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,345</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551723</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoriatalksback/pseuds/anactoriatalksback</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis has no particular need of care, no particular desire to have fingers brush his face or person as though he were something breakable and sacred, a temptation and a promise all at once.</p><p>No particular desire.</p><p>Which is just as well, all things considered.</p><p>Or rather, considering one specific thing: that the man in his bed is James Fitzjames.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>129</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A wounded deer leaps highest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Additional warnings in the end-notes for elements which exist but I didn't think merited mention in the tags.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a certain comfort to knowing one’s place.</p><p>There’s a comfort to knowing one’s place, and a comfort to knowing one’s function. Francis Crozier’s function is to sue, to be rebuffed, to endure and to persist. He knows this. He was built for it, from the set of his jaw to his broad back to the heels he is so adept at digging in.</p><p>Francis has a constitution for striving, pursuit and exacting attention. Something about his square fingers and tilt of his head must commend itself to those with an eye for such things, for he is given pastoral care of delicate instruments and no-less-delicate younger sisters and brothers and – in due course – nephews and nieces.</p><p>Francis is well-accustomed to placing a firm but gentle hand over charges and ships and lovers alike. Well-accustomed to it, and well-pleased to do it. He has no particular need of care, no particular desire to have fingers brush his face or person as though he were something breakable and sacred, a temptation and a promise all at once.</p><p>No <em>particular</em> desire.</p><p>Which is just as well, all things considered.</p><p>Or rather, considering one specific thing: that the man in his bed is James Fitzjames. James who has the bearing of a lifetime’s habit of beauty, James of the glossy hair and swinging tassels, James of the narrow patrician mouth home to its dizzying wealth of shapes. James who seems to have been conjured from Francis’s most heated and self-defeating imaginings.</p><p>James who has another James’s long legs and shining mane, who has his breeding, his ease in crowds large and small, even his mettle. James who has Sophia’s <em>hauteur</em>, the tilt of her head on her elegant neck, the maidenly composure she could slip on and off like an old cloak. There is even, in James’s assessing sidelong glance beneath his lashes, the shape of Sophia’s particular and insalubrious curiosity.</p><p>The first time Francis looked at Fitzjames and thought <em>I could have you</em>, he realised he wasn’t surprised. He could see the contours of it, hazy in the detail but sharp in the outline. Francis would have to make the overture, of course. Fitzjames probably thought he’d done enough by being his imperious glossy long-fingered self, if he even knew what he was doing.</p><p>And then, well. Wide eyes. A gasp of surprise, even affront, but with the peek of a tongue between those thin English lips. A demurral but with a hand on Francis’s arm that would linger too long – entirely too long, Fitzjames hadn’t Sophia’s <em>finesse</em>, or more likely her security in her ability to hold him. Fitzjames would push, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He was a man who’d made a career of pushing, thrusting, forcing intimacies. He’d wait barely a week before engineering an encounter. He’d make excuses to stay on <em>Terror</em> after a command dinner, ensure his most immaculate self was laid out for Francis’s inspection, wrap his long fingers around the stem of a glass, and wait.</p><p>As to what precisely he was waiting <em>for</em>, Francis could guess. He’d seen the arrested gleam in the man’s eyes when he struck the table. <em>On your knees, boyo</em>, he’d thought, <em>or over mine</em>. It would be his job to venture a guess, to play his part in whatever little comedy of outrage and bitten lips and kindling eyes would be enacted for his benefit. Francis would take to his knees (metaphorically) before Fitzjames went to his (literally), and Francis would give Fitzjames what he wanted.</p><p>All of this he could see. He could also see Fitzjames’s eyes narrowing every time he tossed his hair out of his eyes or crossed a blindingly-shod leg and Francis looked away. And – as he continued, determinedly, to glance once and then look away – he could see the clench of Fitzjames’s absurd jaw, hear the gathering affronted spite in his aristocratic drawl.</p><p>There’s a comfort to knowing one’s place. Not least because <em>leaving</em> one’s place then becomes a conscious act rather than an accident.</p><p>So Francis looked steadfastly away, and savoured the one meagre crumb of satisfaction he could come by in those days. And then the nights lengthened, and the timbers stopped creaking, and the occasional scream felt like a relief from the endless and lethal indifference of the great white, and the mutiny of his own body.</p><p>Now they’re back, and fed, and clothed, and in midsummer Francis thinks sometimes he might one day feel warm again. And the man beside him still has a thin gash of a mouth, but now its line has a measured steadiness. When Francis looks at it now, the stinging itch he once felt has ripened into a rich and constant ache.</p><p>He is minded to give James whatever he wants, and James is minded to ask for it: quietly, with no artifice. His eyes on those of Francis are steady and direct, like a man sighting a deadly enemy through his crosshairs. And James – well, James is still a creature of long lines and sudden and improbable curves. His hair still spills in pre-Raphaelite splendour on their white pillows. The tilt of his head is still a challenge and an invitation, as is the line of his ridiculous throat. It is no hardship to lay him out on their bed and feast on him, the dips and shallows and quickening planes of him. No hardship, when he unsheathes himself and James licks his lips at the sight, to ready him with his fingers until James’s head is thrown back and he is whimpering out a plea that sounds like a command. No hardship to ease into a velvet, clutching heat, and shut his eyes at the frantic litany of his name in his ears.</p><p>And if he looks sometimes at James’s elegant prick or his large long-fingered hands and clenches his teeth against a hot dark tangle of thoughts he can barely discern and cannot begin to articulate, well. Worse things happen at sea.</p>
<hr/><p>‘I wasted so much time,’ says James one night. Francis is in bed with <em>A Modest Proposal</em> in his lap. James has doffed his elaborately frogged dressing-gown and is clambering into bed.</p><p>‘When?’ asks Francis. ‘Doing what?’</p><p>‘Three years ago.’ James leans his head on one long hand and turns on his side to look up at Francis. ‘Wondering what I needed to do to make you see me.’</p><p>Francis looks at James. ‘I <em>did</em> see you.’</p><p>Times enough, in fact, that he could see little else.</p><p>‘Want me, then. Want to touch me.’ James’s hand moves on the coverlet. ‘I tend to be <em>point de vice</em> about myself, you know that, but I was … especially particular … on occasions when I thought you might be there.’ A ghost of a grin. ‘I made certain you <em>heard</em> from me as well.’</p><p>‘I remember,’ says Francis. ‘I remember well.’</p><p>‘And nothing seemed to take.’</p><p>Francis reaches out a hand and brushes it through the long dark hair falling over James’s forehead. ‘Not used to that, were you, lad?’</p><p>‘No,’ says James, too simply for it to be a boast. ‘I wasn’t. And so of course, I redoubled my efforts.’</p><p>‘Efforts,’ snorts Francis, ‘You did precisely as you always did, went precisely where you always went, said precisely what you always said. It’s not <em>effort</em> to wait for someone else to come to you, boyo.’</p><p>‘Is it not?’ says James. ‘It felt as though I were expending effort to restrain myself.’</p><p>‘Restrain yourself, is it?’ says Francis. ‘From giving out to me for my tardiness?’</p><p>James shrugs, and slides a little closer. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps I might have tried something more direct.’</p><p>‘Direct,’ says Francis, ‘ah now, whisht your fooling. What would the likes of you even know about chasing after a man, James, what would you know at all?’</p><p>He blinks at the sound of the words on the air. They left his mouth with a rallying bluffness, he’s certain of it. He does not recognise their bitterness, or – rather worse – he does.</p><p>He coughs. ‘You’ve never needed to,’ he says, to James’s unmoving dark eyes, ‘that’s all, James, I’m not giving out to you for - ’</p><p>James sits up. He plucks the book from Francis’s hands and deposits it on their bedside table.</p><p>‘James, I’m - ’</p><p>James pulls away the sheets covering the two of them and swings a knee over so that he’s straddling Francis. His eyes are on him the while.</p><p>‘James, what are you - ’</p><p>‘You didn’t let me finish, you know,’ says James.</p><p>‘Finish what?’</p><p>‘I was <em>saying</em>, if you recall,’ says James, with a very familiar thwarted pomposity, ‘that I wasted time wondering what I could do to make you want me.’</p><p>Francis nods. James continues ‘And then I realised that I was on entirely the false scent.’</p><p>He pauses and looks pointedly at Francis, who casts his eyes heavenwards but says obediently ‘And what was the true scent, then?’</p><p>James shuffles a little closer. He says ‘The stumbling-block wasn’t that you <em>didn’t</em> want me. But rather that you <em>did</em>.’</p><p>‘Profound,’ says Francis, ‘and did that lullaby you to bed, then?’</p><p>‘It did,’ says James, ‘when I realised that, by rebuffing me, you could spite me <em>and</em> yourself in one stroke. Even then, I knew I could not compete with such an inducement.’</p><p>Francis’s lips twitch. He says again ‘Profound.’</p><p>‘On the subject of you I can be,’ says James, and Francis flushes, ‘and I think you are not nearly so accustomed to directness as you profess.’</p><p>Francis looks at James and says ‘And you’re here to instruct me in the ways of directness, are you?’</p><p>James nods. ‘I think,’ he says, and Francis represses a shiver, ‘that I must.’</p><p>A large hand comes up to curve around Francis’s jaw. ‘And so, to be direct with you,’ says James, ‘I saw you looking at me. And I saw you looking away.’</p><p>‘James, what - ’</p><p>A thumb covers his mouth. ‘Like a schoolmarm,’ says James, ‘or a priest.’ His voice rubs its back upon the sibilants luxuriantly. ‘Appalled at the very notion that a creature such as I could lift his eyes to you.’</p><p>Francis shakes off James’s thumb the better to snort.</p><p>‘A shallow thing,’ continues James, ‘A petty fellow with petty concerns, unfit to kiss the hem of serious men with serious brows and serious histories.’</p><p>‘James, what are you - ’</p><p>‘Be quiet,’ says James pleasantly, and Francis’s mouth shuts. ‘Of course I am not of your element, Captain Crozier. You may look at me, and despise me, and look again, and despise yourself, but you’d never <em>pursue</em> me.’</p><p>‘James - ’</p><p>‘Quiet. You’d never dream of seeking me out. What would that make you, after all? Whoso can touch pitch and not be defiled?’</p><p>Francis shakes his head vehemently under James’s staying hand as the man goes on: ‘You have your scruples, after all. Does one not bring one’s scruples to <em>Terror</em>?</p><p>‘Well,’ says James, and is suddenly closer, ‘fortunately for the two of us, in this matter I have no scruples whatsoever.’</p><p>The hand slides to the back of Francis’s neck, and he is dragged in for a kiss, a blistering thing all edges and teeth, with James bending Francis in to his body as though he’s a wisp of a debutante. When he lifts his head, Francis finds himself swaying into him and needs to clutch the front of his nightshirt to steady himself.</p><p>‘What - ’ he says, hot and furious.</p><p>‘A protest,’ says James, lips lifting back from his teeth. ‘A righteous protest from a righteous man. What are my crimes, then, Captain?’</p><p>Francis’s cheeks burn and his lips are stinging. ‘Insubordination,’ he says, ‘disrespect, brutality - ’</p><p>‘ – Dirtiness,’ says James. There’s a brush of scarlet on each high thin cheekbone and Francis wets his lips. ‘You’d have me flogged, wouldn’t you? Bare my arse for every AB and ship’s boy to gawk at, naked and blue in the cold - ’</p><p>Francis swallows. James’s arse, narrow and perfect, raised high while the man lowers himself, haughty and elegant and with the secretive glinting smile he reserves for his favourite debasements, the arch of his lovely spine and the impatient shake of his hair out of the eyes he keeps fixed on Francis –</p><p>‘Nobody else,’ Francis hears his own voice say on an urgent rasp, ‘nobody else sees you.’</p><p>‘Not even to see me chastised on your word?’ says James. ‘Not even to remark your dominion over me?’</p><p>Francis finds his eyes shutting.</p><p>‘None of that,’ comes James’s voice, cracking like a cat on Francis’s ears. ‘You look at me.’</p><p>Francis takes a deep breath and makes his eyes find James’s.</p><p>‘Good,’ says James, and nods. ‘I hope it gives you comfort to think of all the things your authority would permit you to do to me, Captain,’ he says, ‘because they will none of them avail you now. There is nobody here but you and I. You can rail at me if you like, threaten the wrath of the Navy, strike me - ’</p><p>He levels a swift and significant look upon Francis, who lifts his hand and, commending his soul to God, strikes James sharply across the cheek. He cups his hand enough that the motion produces a satisfyingly histrionic crack without lasting hurt, and watches James’s head snap around in a tight graceful parabola.</p><p>He half-expects James’s hand to fly to his cheek with the maidenly outrage and even the single sparkling tear he can command at will, but the movement he produces is more deliberate, the smile pulling at his mouth a dark inward thing that makes Francis’s stomach leap.</p><p>‘You have some fight in you,’ he pronounces, ‘good.’</p><p>His lips descend on Francis’s again, one hand in Francis’s hair, the other kneading his thigh over the thin stuff of his nightshirt with a peremptory roughness. Francis gasps at the handling, a high missish sound he barely has time to try to claw back before it is swallowed into James’s mouth and a tongue snakes past his parted lips to beat a hot and ungentle trail against the inside of his cheek and the roof of his mouth.</p><p>James’s teeth pull insistently at Francis’s bottom lip, and when Francis is given leave to reciprocate the hand in his hair tightens so painfully his teeth sink in. James lets out a yelp and Francis springs away. There is a drop of red welling on that familiar thin lip, swollen now and flushed.</p><p>Francis is reaching for him to tend the hurt, when a large hand shoots up to forestall him. Long thin fingers wrap around Francis’s wrist and bear his hand down to his side and then behind his back. James pulls Francis forward so that his back is bent, painfully enough that Francis grunts.</p><p>‘Quiet,’ says James. He smiles, a long slow red smile, and lifts his thumb to his lip. He swipes across it and then hooks his thumb against Francis’s bottom lip.</p><p>‘Stop that,’ he says, tightening his hand in Francis’s hair as he flinches away, ‘this is your handiwork. Why so nice now?’</p><p>Francis glowers at James and opens his mouth to respond. Swiftly James forces his thumb inside and Francis lips close upon it entirely without his conscious permission. His mouth fills with salt and copper. James makes to withdraw his thumb and Francis lets his teeth graze it in warning.</p><p>‘If it’s so much to your taste,’ says James, ‘I can oblige you with more.’</p><p>A long finger, stained with red, thrusts its way into his mouth. Francis sucks on it, letting his cheeks hollow and watching James’s nostrils flare. His eyes are intent on Francis’s mouth as he shoves his finger and thumb in, further. Francis bites down as hard as he dares and feels the insistent drag of James’s finger against his teeth and tongue. James probes further, and Francis kecks on the long finger against his palate, tears starting in his eyes.</p><p>‘Enough,’ says James, and pulls his hand away, finger and thumb falling out of Francis’s mouth with a soft wet pop that makes them both shiver. He rises on his haunches, weight lifting off Francis’s thighs, but is back to push and arrange Francis so that his shoulder is resting on the bed.</p><p>When James begins to bear Francis down so that his is lying on his belly, Francis begins to draw into himself. ‘James,’ he says, ‘this is - ’</p><p>A long hand, wet with Francis’s spit, grips his jaw and turns it firmly on the pillow. ‘It’s only your back,’ says James, all cheery shake-off-the-morbs-Francis bluffness, ‘you’ve turned it to me often enough, you have years of practice.’</p><p>He flips up the hem of Francis’s nightshirt, and Francis hisses in a breath at the cool air hitting his naked arse.</p><p>‘<em>Well</em>,’ says James with a satisfaction Francis can feel in his teeth. A large hand curves around his buttock, hot and possessive.</p><p>‘The employment I’ve found for my telescope…’ says James, thumb moving in circles over the flesh of his cheek, ‘you knew what you were doing, didn’t you?’</p><p>Francis shakes his head against the pillow and yelps as James pinches him.</p><p>‘You knew what you were doing,’ says James, ‘pacing up and down on deck like a man with a mission or a grudge. You knew. You had to have known. You knew whose eyes were on you.’</p><p>Francis says, to his pillow: ‘Whose eyes?’</p><p>He expects the nip from James this time, expects it enough to muffle the sound he makes. ‘Don’t play coy with me,’ says James. ‘It doesn’t become a man in your position.’</p><p>His position? A hand comes up, heel pressing roughly against the top of his spine to flatten his shoulders against the bed, harder so that his chest is flat too. Francis knows this pose, has swallowed dryly at the sinuous arch of James’s back, the proud sluttish cant of his lovely arse raised in supplication and imperious demand. He shudders to think of his own freckled buttocks and their grotesque mimicry of the haughty invitation that comes so naturally to James.</p><p>Francis represses a shudder, but knows James can see the ripple across his shoulders and back. ‘James,’ he says and then buries his head in the pillow as James’s thumbs sink into the meat of his arse. They move in rough outward concentric circles on Francis’s fundament, stroking and rubbing and raising gooseflesh. He seems to be hunched close over Francis, close enough for puffs of breath to heat and cool his skin in swift succession. Francis knows the attitude, has seen James crouched over a chart or a letter in failing light the same way. Like a jeweller over a watch, he thinks, and wonders what he sees now to hold him so rapt.</p><p>‘Parading yourself,’ says James, his voice a rumble against Francis’s skin, ‘flaunting what you were determined to deny me. Well, there’s little enough you can deny me now.’</p><p>Francis’s head turns on the pillow and then he squawks as James’s teeth sink into his buttock: a decisive snap semaphoring intent. James worries the soft skin of Francis’s arse before releasing it deliberately, then licking over the area with tiny flicks of the point of his tongue, stinging and inflaming the skin and leaving Francis biting furiously at his lip.</p><p>Then James purses his lips over the bite and Francis shuts his eyes. A kiss of almost mincing delicacy is placed on the area, before James opens his mouth and lets his tongue peep out. He crawls over Francis’s arse with lips and teeth and tongue, dancing a strange obscene private quadrille. He licks and nibbles and strokes over the rise of each cheek, slots his fingers into the crease between Francis’s arse and thighs, confidently charting a course that Francis cannot follow.</p><p>And then James wraps a long hand around each of Francis’s thighs and pulls. Francis has to swallow a gasp at the casual disposal of him, as though he’s a hammock or a spare gun, and his head snaps to throw James a glare over his shoulder. He meets glittering brown eyes and then James bends and shoulders his thighs apart, further still. Francis’s cheeks burn at the tableau James has made of him, mottled with teeth and blushes, shining with sweat and James’s spit, and spread out in offering and plea.</p><p>Then James bends his head and kisses Francis’s hole, and Francis cannot hold back his gasp.</p><p>‘James, what are you - ’</p><p>He despises himself: for the fatuous question (he knows what James is doing, of <em>course</em> he knows, who better), for the quaver in his voice, even for the unfamiliar broken-reed whistling rasp that is all he seems to be capable of.</p><p>James regards him silently for a moment, and then his eyes move away politely as though Francis has trodden on a lady’s dress at a dance and James is doing him the grace of pretending that he hasn’t. Francis feels abashed for a moment before he is awash with a familiar fury, at himself, at James, it hardly matters.</p><p>‘What are you - ’ he begins, pulling his shoulders off the bed and drawing his mortification as far into his voice as he can. And then James bends his head and lets his teeth close, very deliberately, over the patch of skin just between Francis’s hole and his spine.</p><p>Francis shoulders hit the bed and he arches up with a groan.</p><p>‘Christ, <em>Christ</em>.’</p><p>James smiles – he can <em>feel</em> James smile against his stinging skin – and scrapes his teeth again, with a certain hateful solicitousness, over the bite. Francis sags into the mattress. His eyes squeeze shut only to slam open again as James’s hand descends between his shoulder-blades, pressing down firmly so that his arse pushes out again.</p><p>‘I like you like this,’ he offers, as though Francis has voiced a question, as though his opinions in the matter are merely incidental, but are being considered solely out of James’s good breeding. Francis’s fists clench in the bedspread and James tsks, an amused sound that has Francis’s head twisting around to lour at him.</p><p>James meets his gaze with his smile only broadening, to Francis’s unspeakable rage. He can only take a morsel of comfort in the unblinking carnivorous tension in James’s dark eyes before he lowers his head and Francis shuts his eyes at the feeling of long soft hair brushing the rise of his fundament.</p><p>He gasps again – a high hurt utterly humiliating sound – at the cool wet trickle of James’s spit on his hole. He’s about to ask – like an imbecile, like a parson’s daughter fresh from the schoolroom – just what the devil James thinks he’s doing, when a warm nimble tongue flattens over his hole and the breath rushes out of him.</p><p>If Francis had given any thought to him James might attend to this task – which he hasn’t – he would have presumed that James would bring all his feline fastidiousness to bear. Extensive ablutions would be required in preparation. Francis would be lapped at, daintily and thoroughly, a grooming and a shriving.</p><p>He has not taken into account James’s appetite, the sheer driving want of the man. James attacks him with a lush, unbridled violence. His hands tighten around Francis’s thighs and his jaw works as though Francis has been hoarding a rare and delicious fruit that James needs to live. He slavers over Francis’s hole like a starving animal. His tongue darts into Francis like something made of quicksilver, hot and wet and greedy and everywhere. He even seems to joyfully abandon his manners at table, smacking his lips as he feasts with an unfettered boyish glee that makes tears start in Francis’s eyes even as he squirms.</p><p>Francis pants against the pillow, scarce knowing whether to spread his thighs to allow James’s broad shoulders easier access to him, or squeeze them together to feel that tumbled mane against the soft skin of his thighs. He can feel James’s spit washing the crease between his arse-cheeks and the inside of his thighs, cooling in the air as James eases away. Francis rocks back before he quite knows what he is about and feels before he hears a pleased hum against his skin. He is not suffered to squirm away, long thumbs parting his cheeks and thin lips fastening over his hole to suck long and obscenely. He pushes back into the touch, then clenches his teeth and is about to scramble up when James’s hands clamp about his thighs and stay him.</p><p>‘Let me look at you,’ comes James’s voice.</p><p>Francis squeezes his eyes shut. He does not know how he looks and is grimly thankful to be spared the knowledge, but James – characteristically – is not minded to be so merciful.</p><p>‘You look,’ he says, ‘just here - ’ and a long finger strokes Francis’s hole with a touch both casual and intimate, ‘like a wallflower at a ball, waiting to be kissed.’</p><p>Francis spares a moment of scepticism for any knowledge, conceptual or empirical, that James might possess of wallflowers, and throws a look at him over his shoulder. The man is staring down at Francis’s entrance, tongue between his teeth. When he feels Francis’s eyes on him, he lifts his head and smiles, a slow thing, covetous and satisfied at once. A starving man who has been shown a feast and spots an empty place around the board.</p><p>He keeps his eyes on those of Francis as he slides his finger into his hole. Francis writhes and tries to throttle the sound that escapes him. This is alien, unspeakably so, and Francis wants to snap to James that he’s had his fun, that Francis has indulged his histrionics long enough, to get into bed and prove his point some other way.</p><p>He could do it. He should do it. This is an intrusion, a terrible and specific one. This is something mobile and demanding and brash, imperious and demanding like the man between his thighs.</p><p>Francis should decry it. He will.</p><p>He’s about to.</p><p>It is getting imperative that he does.</p><p>Because here and now, splayed open and dripping, there is also a hot creeping -</p><p>‘It goes easily,’ says James, his eyes bright, ‘Francis, can you feel it?’</p><p>Francis can, he can. His body welcomes James, tries him joyfully, immediately wants more of him. He shudders and turns his face to the pillow, but there is no escaping the long draughtsman’s finger probing inside him, the emptiness he feels when it withdraws, or the moan – even stifled against the pillow – of relief when a second finger sinks in with a soft filthy sound.</p><p>‘So easily,’ says James, and Francis grunts as he tweaks at the meat of his inner thigh with one long finger, ‘who else has had you like this?’</p><p>He presses in and Francis writhes.</p><p>‘Who else, Francis?’ he says again. ‘Whom did you allow? What did you permit with this greedy little hole while you refused to look at me?’</p><p>He makes to draw out and then pushes in again with a soft sucking sound. Francis buries his face in the pillow.</p><p>‘Who,’ says James again, stroking insistently at Francis’s inner walls while Francis bites his lip on a scream, ‘else. Francis?’</p><p>He leans over Francis and grips his chin painfully. Francis, hair sticking to his forehead and fingers clenching against the bedspread, feels no impulse to restrain a snarl. ‘I permitted,’ he says, ‘<em>nothing</em>.’</p><p>James’s eyes blaze and a small pleased smile lifts his lips before it’s schooled into something sharper. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘you <em>permitted</em> nothing. You’re not permitting <em>this</em>, are you?’</p><p>He straightens and extracts his fingers. Francis’s cheeks burn at the way his hole clings to them as they depart. James does not remark this, and he barely has time to thread together thanks for his uncharacteristic forbearance, when he is flipped unceremoniously, nightshirt up by his waist, legs spread like a Limehouse pinchcock who’s found a bed for the night.</p><p>‘You’re not permitting <em>anything</em>,’ says James again, ‘you’re <em>furious</em>, in fact.’</p><p>And the backs of two long fingers stroke delicately over the length of his prick.</p><p>Francis arches off the bed, lips pulled back from his teeth in something that is not a cry and not a growl. A hand grips his thigh to ground him and James continues ‘Furious just like this monster here.’</p><p>He strokes again, like the wings of a butterfly on a rose-petal. Francis lies with his chest heaving, snatching back every sound that threatens to escape except for the panting breaths he is attempting to school into evenness.</p><p>‘Angry,’ muses James, ‘so angry you’re frothing.’</p><p>He holds up a long finger for Francis’s inspection. And true enough, to Francis’s great crawling horror and delight, gleaming on the tip is a drop of clear stuff from the head of Francis’s prick. Francis’s prick, choleric and self-contained and built for inundation, which has heretofore disdained utterly to leak. Francis’s prick, now eking out clear drops under James’s dark gloating eye and feather-light touch.</p><p>James puts his finger to his own mouth and sucks, letting his eyes flutter shut. This is an attitude with which Francis is familiar: this is James’s dinner-table mummery, coarsened and refined for the bedroom. Francis watches James’s jaw work, far more thoroughly than remotely warranted by the freight his finger carries. He watches that long throat bob and swallows at the rumbling purr he emits.</p><p>Francis watches and bathes in the familiar affection and exasperation and teeth-bared want that washes over him every time he is treated to James Fitzjames, Siddons of the Bedchamber. He reaches for him only for long fingers, wet from Francis’s prick and James’s own mouth, to clamp over his wrist.</p><p>‘No,’ says James, and pins Francis’s hand to the bed. The touch is light, and Francis cocks an eyebrow. He flexes his wrist under the hold, just to see – and, yes, the fingers tighten, just enough to brook no disagreement. Francis pulls again, and feels his lips lifting from his teeth as the fingers tighten further.</p><p>‘No,’ says James again, ‘no, I rather think not, I’m afraid.’ His voice is smooth, that of a favoured son of the gentry charmingly refusing a tenant’s importunate petition. Francis gives him a kindling eye, but subsides. James gives him an approving nod and Francis clenches his jaw, cock twitching.</p><p>‘A handsome fellow,’ James muses, fingers running up and down lightly over Francis’s prick, ‘especially presented for me like this.’ He tugs down the hem of Francis’s nightshirt so that it wraps around the base of Francis’ cock, and he jolts at the sensation of the cotton around his red and straining prick.</p><p>Then James bends and – fist still wrapped around the base of Francis’s cock – licks a leisurely swipe up to the tip. Francis arches off the bed with a shout, and the hand around his cock slams down on his belly.</p><p>‘Very nice,’ says James, his voice fraying slightly around the edges, ‘but I think I want to see what I’m paying for.’</p><p>Francis draws some air into his lungs and says ‘paying?’</p><p>He meets James’s gaze. ‘You’ll make me pay for this, won’t you?’</p><p>Francis nods. ‘I’ll knit the cat myself,’ he says.</p><p>James’s tongue passes over his lips. ‘Well, then,’ he says, ‘I had better get my money’s worth, hadn’t I?’</p><p>He sits back and hauls Francis up, crumpling the hem of his nightshirts in his hands. He slides the shirt up over Francis’s belly, passing agonisingly over his prick, and urges Francis’s arms up so that he can pull the shirt over his head.</p><p>‘It’s soaked through,’ he remarks, and Francis glowers. He’s aware, and of the way his thin hair is clinging to his forehead. James takes his chin in one large hand and bends to run the tip of his nose up Francis’s throat. ‘The smell of you,’ he says, the voice a dark brown rumble against Francis’s skin. ‘The <em>taste</em>.’ And his tongue licks a flat wet stripe from Francis’s shoulder-blade up his neck. Francis shivers, and the hand around his chin clamps down. Francis swallows, feeling the motion of his throat under James’s hot hand, and grits his teeth when a moan threatens to break free.</p><p>‘So red,’ says James, lifting his head to cast an assessing eye down Francis’s chest, ‘all the way down to your belly. More righteous indignation than a body can bear.’</p><p>Francis scoffs, a thready sound that turns into a groan as James’s hand returns to his cock. He frigs him in long, measured strokes, the easy pace of a man who has only his pleasure to consider, and Francis’s chest rises and falls in uneven shuddering waves.</p><p>James gathers up the stuff leaking from Francis’s prick, coating his fingers with it assiduously. Then he trails his hand down to the base of Francis’s cock, passing with agonising gentleness over his bollocks, to finally circle daintily over his hole. Francis’s own fluids circling his own entrance. A liberty, a pointedly filthy and particular one. Francis flinches away, shuddering breath and twitching cock, and James waits politely for him to still before inserting the tip of his finger.</p><p>And there it is again, that mannered and unmannerly intrusion, eased by James’s spit and the shameful evidence of Francis’s own profuse and dribbling pleasure at this handling.</p><p>‘Look at you,’ says James, circling delicately inside Francis’s hole and smiling at Francis’s violently-suppressed tremor. Then he withdraws his finger and Francis cannot quite hold back a noise of protest (not a whine. He will deny this with sword and rifle if need be).</p><p>‘Oh, I am not nearly finished with you yet,’ says James, and Francis doesn’t know whether he wants to strike him more for his soothing accents or for Francis’s own gratitude at the words.</p><p>James reaches for the oil by their table and pours a liberal quantity over his fingers. ‘I want you <em>dripping</em>,’ he says, lingering over the word and watching Francis blush and flinch. He slides in the first finger again, a confident foray from a man sure of his welcome. He probes with an easy familiarity, a friend of the family strolling through the grounds exclaiming at how little things have changed since he has been away.</p><p>The second finger has Francis’s eyes fluttering, the third has one of his hands clutching the bedspread, the other fist crammed into his own mouth. James seems to relish the sordid, wet sounds of his fingers entering and leaving Francis’s hole, the unspeakable immediacy of it.</p><p>‘It seems,’ says James in his dinner-table accents, ‘that you are at odds, Captain.’</p><p>Francis swallows and looks at him. He can see James’s eyes, dark and gleaming, and the movement of his shoulder as his fingers plunge in and out of Francis.</p><p>‘<em>You</em> might disdain to glance at me,’ says James, and his lips pull into a thin, exalted smile, ‘but the same cannot be said of this greedy little cunt.’</p><p>Francis quivers at the sound of the word in James’s voice, the rapt pleasure he takes in the sound of the hard ‘c’, the gunshot crack of the final ‘t’. How crisp and tidy and unspeakably dirty it sounds in those clipped patrician tones. He imagines himself, slick and pouting and wet with James’s fingers buried in him, and thinks with a hot unspeakable rush that James’s words might transform him into someone to whom these words might be said, that if he looked down at himself he might see James’s fingers sucked into a starving pink quim.</p><p>Something of what he feels must show in his eyes, because James watches him with a slowly-dawning smile. ‘Oh, you know what is expected of you,’ he says, his eyes sliding down to his own fingers, ‘See how well you take to it. Look at this hungry little cunny gobbling up my fingers.’</p><p>Francis shivers, beset and furious and delighted, and turns his head away. He is unsurprised when James’s other hand grips his jaw and turns him back.</p><p>‘No,’ says James, with the simplicity of a man who expects his every request to be treated as a command, ‘no, you shall see and feel, Captain, I shall not tolerate shirking.’</p><p>Francis swallows and glares. This seems to amuse James mightily.</p><p>‘Yes, at odds,’ says James, ‘fire and brimstone above decks, and below…’</p><p>And his fingers find a spot within Francis that he has always made a point of finding in James and strumming mercilessly until the man is near tears, a spot that Francis has always known theoretically that he possessed but has never spared a thought for until now. A spot that makes Francis arch off the back and yell with a pleasure so immediate and piercing that it feels like violence.</p><p>James watches as Francis falls back onto the bed before pressing on the spot again. And again, and again, until Francis is writhing on James’s fingers and panting wetly into the pillow.</p><p><em>Christ</em>, thinks Francis, somewhere deep inside himself, <em>someone taught him well</em>. And on the heels of that thought comes another: I<em> taught him well.</em></p><p>When Francis subsides James is watching him, fingers resting with threatening delicacy on that terrifying place and his eyes dark and intent.</p><p>‘Could you spend like this?’ he asks. Francis does not reply: his prick is red and stiff and dribbling, he’s squirming on James’s fingers and he cannot swear to much about the body that at the start of the evening he had thought he understood better than any man living.</p><p>‘I think you could,’ says James, with a natural philosopher’s gleam, and Francis’s throat clicks. ‘But,’ he continues, ‘opportunities such as these do not present themselves every day.’</p><p>And he withdraws his fingers, eyes darting to Francis’s at the sucking sound of his hole reluctantly relinquishing them.</p><p>He reaches for the hem of his nightshirt and draws it off, shaking out his hair with that beautiful impetuous motion that has Francis setting his teeth against a sigh. Then he reaches for the oil, and sits up on his knees so that Francis can see him work his own prick – long and slender and elegant, like the man himself. He frigs himself languorously, once, twice, cock emerging from between his fingers pink and newly glistening.</p><p>Then he holds the base of his prick, kneels between Francis’s legs, and feeds the tip into his hole.</p><p>And this – this is new. This is James’s lovely haughty prick transmuted into something weighty and absolute, an undeniable invasion. This is the wiles of James’s nimble, coaxing fingers turned into something blunter, resistant to prevarication. This is Francis being pinned down and pried open and with warm, living flesh beating insistently within him.</p><p>There is a gasp in the room: high and sharp, radiating an almost-indignant pleasure. From his own throat, he realises dimly, and cannot begrudge himself the sound. He didn’t know, he thinks, the <em>injustice</em> that he could have carried his body, his poor suffering body that he has subjected to indifference and neglect and drink and cold and hunger, that has weathered these indignities for fifty years, that in all that time he never knew that a pleasure this sharp and filthy and fierce were even <em>possible</em> –</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James. The sound is hushed, almost fearful. Francis’s eyes meet his. There is something there that he recognises, something of his own bewilderment.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James again, and passes his tongue over his lips, ‘Francis, you feel…’</p><p>‘Yes?’ says Francis, on a rasp he barely recognises. He wants, very badly, to know. ‘Tell me, you must…’</p><p>James shakes his head, a wondering helpless motion. ‘<em>Francis</em>,’ he says again.</p><p>Francis risks placing a tremulous hand on James’s damp back and says ‘You can give me more.’</p><p>James nods, but stays still, arms trembling.</p><p>‘More,’ says Francis again, moves his hand down to James’s buttock, and squeezes.</p><p>There is a shuddering gasp from the man, and then ‘Francis, Christ, man, you can’t - ’</p><p>‘Come <em>on</em>,’ says Francis again.</p><p>James nods again, shakily, and pushes in. And there Francis is, weighed down by James’s long body as he walks in, rearranges Francis, takes him and claims him. There are James’s large hands kneading at the soft flesh of his thighs, drawing one leg up to make room for himself, a hungry impatient motion. This is what it is, thinks Francis, shaking beneath James – <em>beneath</em> him, beneath him and wrapped around him – to feel like something that can be so disposed of, something small and frail and biddable, a drooping and pliant willow rather than the pitted withered ash he knows himself to be.</p><p>There is his mouth, hanging slackly open as he tries to suck in air. There is James, eyes wild and intent on him.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James, the sound almost plaintive. Francis feels a tidal access of pity and terror and pride that James, <em>his</em> James, the man of many words, has been so forsaken by language in this moment. He raises a hand to James’s cheek and he turns his face to press a wet open-mouthed kiss to his palm.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James, ‘Francis, is it good?’</p><p>Hand still cupping James’s cheek, Francis nods. He says ‘You?’</p><p>‘Oh,’ says James, a long soft sound. ‘Francis, it’s so …’</p><p>His eyes seem to be turned inwards and Francis wants, very badly, to join him. ‘Tell me’ he says again, and opens his eyes at the urgency in his voice.</p><p>James swallows. ‘Hot,’ he says. ‘Safe. Held.’ His eyes flutter shut as he takes a breath. ‘I feel – Francis, I feel as though I could do <em>anything</em>.’</p><p>Oh, this Francis knows. Of the lavish, ungovernable snare of James’s body, its searing and fierce harbour. Francis lifts his chin and James descends on him ravenously, licking and sucking and biting at his lips.</p><p>James pulls back, hovering inches from Francis’s lips. He clears his throat. ‘Well, then,’ and Francis is fascinated as he draws to him, with shaking fingers, the shredded flapping remnants of his seigneurial manner, ‘how does my Captain fare below – agh!’</p><p>Francis squeezes down on him, a vindictive movement that has James writhing atop him. He drops his forehead to Francis’s and pants wetly against his mouth before lifting his head. He’s trying for a pout, Francis thinks, and grins back at him until James sniffs and bends his head for a kiss.</p><p>When he lifts his head he says ‘Francis, may I - ’</p><p>‘Move,’ says Francis. James nods, leaning his forehead back against that of Francis. He pulls away and pushes in, a gentle rocking motion, picking up to match the heart beating erratically against Francis’s breast.</p><p><em>Good</em>, thinks Francis, and thinks immediately <em>not enough</em>.</p><p>‘Harder,’ he says, lips against James’s ear. James shivers and raises his head to stare at Francis.</p><p>‘Harder,’ says Francis again, and clenches down on James who lets out a wounded howl, cock pulsing inside him.</p><p>‘Francis – Francis, please, I - ’</p><p>‘Harder,’ says Francis again, lips pulled back from his teeth in a jubilant snarl.</p><p>James nods again, shakily, catches Francis’s lips with his own and pushes in. Francis’s head falls back, eyes squeezing shut as he’s driven back with every fierce thrust. James’s head drops to the crook of Francis’s shoulder. His lips move up Francis’s throat, to his chin, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. Francis turns his head to find his lips, the pair letting out a single wounded moan.</p><p>Even when James lifts his head to suck in breath, he cannot seem to go far. ‘Francis,’ he pants against Francis’s cheek, ‘Francis, <em>Francis</em>.’</p><p>There is a hot hand on Francis’s cock, knuckles against his belly. Francis grunts in James’s ear.</p><p>‘Will you,’ says James, ‘Francis, you must - ’</p><p>‘Christ,’ says Francis, ‘James, Christ, <em>Christ</em>.’</p><p>James is frigging him harder and harder, hand flying over his prick as he hammers into him.</p><p>‘You must,’ says James again, voice pleading.</p><p>Francis swallows and looks at James, eyes huge and very dark in his narrow face.</p><p>‘Francis,’ he says again, hoarsely, ‘for me, Francis.’</p><p>Francis spends, not entirely with his own permission. He streaks his own belly and James’s chest, and the hand that James raises to his cheek is wet and glistening. In a lifetime of voyaging, he has never felt so extensively unmoored.</p><p>When he comes to himself, he feels the snap of James’s hips, the wet slap of flesh against throbbing, overheated flesh. James’s mouth is a quivering, shapeless thing, bitten white and red. He is sucking in breath in sobs.</p><p>‘Sssshhhh,’ says Francis, hand stroking up and down James’s back.</p><p>‘Francis,’ says James again. He mouths at Francis’s jaw. His breath is coming in tormented gasps.</p><p>‘Ssssshhh, lamb, you’re doing so well, so well.’</p><p>‘<em>Francis</em>.’</p><p>‘Come now, come away, you can, there now, good lad.’</p><p>James seizes, going entirely rigid over Francis before spilling into him. Francis lets out a small, pleased grunt at the hot gush of James’s seed inside him, running a hand up and down James’s shuddering back.</p><p>James collapses against Francis, chest heaving. A warm weight pressing Francis into the mattress, inexorable and immovable, a welcome and perfect inconvenience. He rouses himself at length with some effort and slips out of Francis with a fat hot trail of his release. Francis looks at the drying splash of his own seed on James’s chest and finds himself grinning without meaning to. James sniffs at him haughtily, slides off the bed and stands on coltish, unsteady legs.</p><p>He returns with a wetted cloth, and when Francis reaches for it his hand is smacked ungently away. ‘Lie down,’ says James, and Francis complies. The cloth is passed over his chest and belly, over his prick (curled up and sleeping peacefully) and between his thighs. The movement of the cloth is careful, a precise and hushed attention that has Francis drawing in a very sharp breath.</p><p>James next wipes down his own chest, and Francis narrows his eyes as the marks of his release disappear. When he has finished, James puts away the cloth and crawls into bed next to Francis. When Francis reaches for him, he sits back.</p><p>‘May I,’ he says, ‘may I hold you, Francis?’</p><p>Francis raises his eyebrows, but suffers himself to be turned to one side, James curling around him like an elegant comma. He slings a long arm about Francis’s belly, a long leg over Francis’s hip.</p><p>Francis lies and wills his limbs to unknit. The weight of James, the heat of him, is not unusual, nor is the proprietorial cling of his endless limbs. It is only that he is being pressed down into the mattress by his arm and leg. It is only that he is shielded only by James’s angular frame. It is only that the arm about him has a hand pressed solidly to his heart. It is only that he is being held.</p><p>‘You have an answer now,’ says James’s voice. Deep and rich and pleased with itself.</p><p>Francis grunts an inquiry.</p><p>‘You asked,’ says James, ‘what I would know of chasing a man. You have an answer now.’</p><p>‘Whom else, then,’ says Francis, ‘have you chased?’ He thinks, even as he says it, that he does not want to know the answer.</p><p>The arm around him tenses and James says ‘Nobody.’</p><p>Francis’s eyes shut, and he brings up the hand on his heart to bite the heel of its palm. ‘I was right, then,’ he says, when he thinks he can master his voice, ‘You knew nothing. Nothing at all.’</p><p>‘I knew enough,’ says James. Francis can feel him bristle at his back and laughs. ‘I knew enough to chase you, did I not?’</p><p>Francis feels his cheeks heat, and snorts with emphasis. ‘A fine chase, that was, with the most stationary of quarries.’</p><p>‘I could have you run through the house, if you prefer,’ says James, smiling against his shoulder, ‘we could let a house in the countryside somewhere. I could let you loose in the woods.’</p><p>Francis thinks of mist around his ankles. He thinks of his aging knees. He thinks of hauling James through the tundra. He thinks of open skies, of hearth and crackling fires and their own bed in which he is cradled in James’s arms, full again and strong. He says ‘If you like.’</p><p>James raises himself up behind Francis to look at him. He says ‘Would <em>you</em> like to?’</p><p>Francis turns his head and looks at James. The eyes on his are searching and serious. He says ‘If we take a cottage in the woods, I’d find better hunts for you than myself.’</p><p>A long hand comes up to brush Francis’s hair off his forehead. A whispering touch, so unbearably gentle that Francis finds his eyes shutting. ‘No such thing,’ says James. ‘I want you, you see.’</p><p>‘You have me,’ says Francis. He opens his eyes to find James’s. ‘You have me, James.’</p><p>James nods and curls around Francis again. ‘That helps,’ he says, and Francis’s fingers tighten on the hand he’s still holding. He knows these words, has said them to himself. He knows the place in his heart he tries to soothe with them. <em>Were I a better man</em>, he thinks, <em>I would take it from you, the thing that will not be sated by feeding, I would take it and carry it myself and barely notice the load. </em></p><p>Because Francis is not a better man, he presses James’s hand on his heart to try to force back the fierce gloating joy he feels. He takes a breath and says ‘Let me hold you.’</p><p>When James releases him, Francis pulls him into his arms. James noses his way into the crook of his shoulder, tangles their legs together. Francis twines a strand of gleaming dark hair around his fingers and thinks that in the very long list of privileges that come with having James Fitzjames, he never looked for the greatest one being to be had <em>by</em> him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>James and Francis are role-playing a scene where James has a reluctant Francis in his power. I didn't think it was rough enough to qualify as Consensual Non-consent, but that is technically what they're doing.</p><p>At one point James uses deliberately feminising language with Francis with the express intention - and outcome - of shaming or at least embarrassing Francis. Again I didn't think it merited tags for either humiliation or feminisation, but it is there in the text. </p><p>Be safe, my doves.</p><p>Come yell with me on <a href="https://twitter.com/itsevidentvery">twitter</a> or <a href="https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>.</p><p>A handy-dandy rebloggable link for this fic is <a href="https://itsevidentvery.tumblr.com/post/629729908881555456/a-wounded-deer-leaps-highest-anactoriatalksback">here</a> if you are so inclined.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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